As electronic digital technology develops continuously, electronic apparatuses or electronic products with various different application functions are frequently applied in our daily life. For example, the development of mobile computing technology provides portable electronic apparatuses or mobile computing apparatuses, such as mobile phones, smart phones, personal digital assistants (PDA), or laptops, thereby providing rather great user convenience and various utilities.
In addition, a navigation function is widely used in a standalone device or integrated within other portable devices. A common example is a global positioning system (GPS) receiving signals from various satellites and computing position information according to the signals, and displaying the position in the corresponding map. For example, the position information is a longitude and latitude data, or a coordinate data corresponding to a predetermined map. Regardless of the navigation apparatus is set in a moving vehicle or held by a moving person, the navigation apparatus loads a relevant electronic map data, continuously computes a current position according to GPS signals, and then shows the position with the map on the monitor in real-time.
Furthermore, since the navigation apparatus has high computing capabilities along with a large capacity memory and an accurate electronic map, the apparatus is able to provide the navigation function to find the best route from the starting position to a specified destination based on the received GPS signals and the electronic map data. Information of the destination is entered via a user interface, then the navigation apparatus computes, plans, and acquires a suitable walking or driving route, so as to guide the user to successfully travel from an origin to the destination according to the planned route. Based on the planned route, a direction indication displayed in a two/three-dimensional (2D/3D) map allows an user to instinctively arrive to the destination.
However, the present GPS technology does have several shortcomings. Because the GPS signals could not be received in indoor, the conventional GPS technology can only be applied outdoors, such as to identify or to position streets, traffic, and terrestrial, or any geographical objects. The conventional GPS technology could not be used indoors, such as to identify or to position an indoor exhibition area, a large-scale exhibition hall, a museum, a supermarket, or a shopping mall. It is important and necessary to provide a proper route navigation service to a visitor for the reason that the area is rather large such that the visitor needs a guide. In addition, a general public electronic map is not able to display the map information or object information for the room or building, and hence a general navigation apparatus does not provide the indoor navigation function.
Furthermore, with respect to operations in a vertical direction between different floors, the present GPS technology generates great errors in performing positioning function. Moreover, for a large-scale factory having a complicated layout environment, an automated machine has to move on a predetermined route and need to have a highly accurate positioning and navigation capability to produce the route. The conventional GPS technology is hard to solve the abovementioned problem.
Therefore, one main object of the present invention is to provide a positioning navigation apparatus and method to solve the problem.